ilyani.net

1. I am back home for Eid holiday.. yes I took early holiday coz I practically manage my own time now hehe.. havent even told my supervisor but I dont think she really minds anyway. And I’m home til 16th. Hmm.. is it enough? No?

2. Regarding the serviced apartment: aircond, water heater, fan, lamps have been well beautifully installed there. The mini fridge and microwave oven have also been sent, though still in boxes. We went to try up a curtain from home, only to find it’s about 1 foot too short. Hmph. Wanted to bring another dark pink curtain from home but when I measured it, it’s still half a foot short.. aiyo. I found some new curtain still in bags at home, from the shopping my family had early this year in Dubai.. and this exotic looking curtain with brown color which I guess.. can be suitable (or not?).. but Mama says, “hmm, eh that’s for my room lah. Or.. save that for your wedding“.. erk. Hehehe. And today went to Tesco with Mama, singgah this Honyi textile center and found a great bargain of a ready-made quality and pretty curtain of less than RM100! Mission accomplished :D

3. Though we got a bad news, that the tiles in the bathroom werent installed to let the water run to the drainage properly.. I mean, you get the lopak air bertakung.. =,= which is.. gross! Got to report to the management to fix it, though I dont know how long it will take them to get it done.. hmm.. planning to start overnight/start the business as fast as possible, but with the bathroom problem it’s unlikely to be in that soon.

4. Yesterday Az and family took a road trip  from Sydney to Melbourne and are spending a few days there. They will be coming back home on 4th day of Hari Raya. His sisters apparently are purchasing this quality Corelle dinnerware to bring home to Malaysia to ship along with the sister’s stuff who’s moving back home for good. I understand that the brand is really cheap in there.. and actually I made a website on their behalf for promotion.. so please check corelle.azharhamid.com if you’d like to get the offer ^_^

5. I love it when Az does spend some time uploading pictures and writes in his blog & our blog, therefore I am following his trip updates almost everyday, apart from the emails and chat. I so much feel like being there too!! >.< (BTW please note that Az’s personal blog & azhar.ilyani.net are both private and recently have been made hidden from Google search – well, coz I know some curious peeps happen to be searching for them every now and then – for whatever reason they may have.. I mean, please dont waste your time anymore, okay?)

6. I haven’t got my baju raya ready T_T.. it’s been as if so many years I didnt give much darn about preparing for Hari Raya.. the clothings included. Is there such thing as “malas nak beraya”?? Well, it did happened to me lately, especially last year.. so I kinda forgot to be excited about the festive this year.. oh well. I dont have anyone to visit here anyway apart from the grandma’s home, & Abah’s kampung. And it hasnt been as good as the old days anyway. My friends are far away.. or exactly, I never have any friends in my home town.. or actually, not anymore.. and I never really get any guest or friends visiting me. Those Hari Raya guests are either friends/relatives of my parents or my sisters, but never mine. So there, Hari Raya is pretty much just another day to me, personally.

Dear WordPress,

2 am, the second day of Hari Raya. I am not feeling good. I don’t know why either. I started to think that I have been trying run away from my nature and my own self, as if in order to become a normal person, though I am not actually aware how to define what normal is like. Whether I like it or not, it’s like how the world prefers me to be.

Good night.

9 Zulhijjah 1429, after sunset. After a long wait for the bus, we left Arafat for Muzdalifah, an area between Arafat and Mina. In here pilgrims made a stop to pick up small stones to use in rituals of ‘stoning the devils’ at Jamrat place in Mina the next day. Though the area was actually covered by desert sand rather than rocks or small stones, and even if there were supposed to be some small stones laying somewhere, they were almost gone. I mean, thousands of people have been hunting for them today! Hmm but my father managed to get some for us, and we kept these stones inside a small cloth bag.

The pilgrims stopped in Muzdalifah to spend a few hours sleeping on the ground during the night of 9 Zulhijjah.

Picking small stones. It looks easy, but not. You may need torchlight, and you may mistake a stone with other junk.

While everyone back home in Malaysia were busy preparing for the big Eid next day, the pilgrims in Muzdalifah were having picnic on a desert surrounded by cold wind and crowds.

It’s part of the Hajj stages actually – to spend the night of 9 Zulhijjah in Muzdalifah. But since it’s only a few hours, and there were millions of us the pilgrims, providing camps isn’t that necessary.  So we just spent the night laying on the ground itself, covered with plastic carpet provided by Tabung Haji.. and it’s not that bad actually. You don’t get to have a picnic with thousands people at a time, at night, in other places but Muzdalifah :) Lucky that on the bus they loved to constantly provide food and drinks so we didn’t left starving.